Digital Security

Online is the new front line. We shop online. We work online. We play online. We live online. More and more, our lives depend on online, digital services. Almost everything can be done online from shopping and banking to socialising and all of this makes the internet, also known as online spaces (cyberspace). We often do this without stopping to think about the security issues that might be involved.

As S.K.I.R.T.S. offer training with focus on digital Security as a means of creating awareness around cyber security threats. With focus in universities, colleges, CSO’s, organizations and associations. We seek to equip people the with skills and tactics on how to take charge of their online presence, and steps in which individuals can take to represent themselves online.

What online safety entails

1)DIGITAL FOOTPRINTS

We are all SOCIAL and the internet helps us to connect globally with everyone whether we know them or not. This availability of connecting with everyone can either work for you or against you. For example; your online postings can secure you an amazing career opportunity if you use it right to express your passion on certain global issues. At the same time, internet availability can work against you and that is SKIRTS roles to REDEFINE TECH for you.

Having social media accounts proves your existence, character and personality; on a bad day, you happen to post a harsh comment and this gets replicated in multiple locations on the internet. What do you do? It’s important to ensure that your digital footprints are a clear representative of who you are and how you want the rest of the world to view you.

Knowing your online trail makes you incharge of your online safety and you can easily explain different contents based on the context that was used.Digital footprints stakes get higher for women and girls in terms data manipulation, stalking and defrauding. In a society that’s highly patriarchal, it’s wise to have some tricks up your sleeve in order to protect yourself as female species on the image you want to portray to the world. Remember: You are only in charge of what you say, how its portrayed by others is out of your scope, so ensure you express yourself adequately online and be in charge of your words.

2) PASSWORD MANAGEMENT

A friend of mine expressed his concern on the amount of passwords that we all have to manage today. There are bank passwords in relation to internet banking, mobile money, work emails, personal emails, subscription websites,online learning, social media accounts which are like five per person etc. So how do you ensure that you do not replicate the same password across all accounts?

It’s tricky,right? Given that you have a life to live, a family to take care of, a job to do and friends to catch up with. How then do you let password nightmare get into your way? Someone once said, that you choose the most memorable work and then tweak it across all platform, easy to remember right?

Another friend said that it doesn’t matter, you can let google chrome save it for you so that it helps you to remember.

Let me share a scenario with you; A young lady called “Jane” secured a dream job at HQ corporations.With a vibrant lifestyle and a top of the game online personality and offline too obviously) She happened to be using one password across all the online platforms she signed up to.

Upon a bad break up in her personal life, her workmates soon got to know of her private innuendos all because of using a single password that’s easy to guess by someone who’s close to you or even through social engineering.

Lave a look at all your email communication patterns and the number of people you connect with and how they can be affected by a tarnished reputation via a hacked account. Check out https://immersion.media.mit.edu/ and connect the dots with all the other accounts that connected to your email and then deduce how much is at skate wth poor password management.

There are free and open source tools that you can adopt in order to improve your password management skills, this is a more preventative approach to digital security. No dedicated policies and laws in Kenya are in place that will help you hold your perpetrator accountable to infringing your online privacy.

Contact us if you need help with password management, we will help you set up an easy to use password manager. Also continue to go through our website for more tips and tricks to effective online privacy and safety.